Six Months
by consulting-adjective
Summary: John copes with losing Sherlock after Reichenbach Fall.


***SPOILERS***

**This is technically Johnlock, but you barely get to anything in that sense. And it's set in the months after Reichenbach Fall. **

**Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. If they were I would probably not be writing fan fiction.**

**I hope you enjoy my first fic!**

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Six months.

182 days since he fell.

For the first few months I behaved irrationally. Wasting my days wallowing in hatred of myself, in hatred of him. A haze of nightmares. I've seen my best friend die more times than I care to count. That coat of his flapping wildly as though he might be trying to fly.

I could not bring myself to look at the flat. It was too empty. Lifeless without that mad, wonderful man. Months were whiled away curled up on Mrs. Hudson's couch, eating whatever she put in front of me. If you could constitute staring blankly at it eating. People would visit. Some came to me thinking I could solve their problems, or give them some kind of inside story of living with a psychopath. I turned them away, saying that I had nothing to offer them. I was not Sherlock Holmes, and I never lived with any psychopath. I lived with my best friend, the greatest man I have ever known.

Sarah visited sometimes, for me. Molly also came around, once, a week after. She cried quite a lot, but seemed to be more distressed at my own state, rather than the loss of Sherlock. I would have found this odd at time had I not been in such a state. Lestrade never visited. I suspect he felt an obligation to believe the papers. Ashamed that he had let a psychopath into his investigations, and too ashamed to confront me when he believed so.

After a couple of months of convincing from Mrs. Hudson, I limped back to my psychiatrist. Talking about it, what I never said, or did. It made it all so much worse. Hiding was easier, I could simply deny the enormity of what I lost that day. It made it all hurt less. At least before I had been broken deepest in a part of me that I had not accepted. So it was concealed from view. But to realize that I cared, and had always cared, in a way so much greater than friendship, for a man who was gone. That is what sent me over the edge.

I made it through two sessions before I was back to spending my days in front of Mrs. Hudson's television. I began yelling at the imbeciles playing out their parts, like he had done. Being with Sherlock gave me the ability to see so much more. Sometimes, for a moment, after shouting at the tele, I imagined it was Sherlock who had said those words. Suddenly I was back upstairs, and he was solving the murders of fictional characters in crime/dramas. Reality supplied a terrible sting.

Three months after he did, I climbed to the rooftop of St. Bart's. It was sweltering. I wiped the perspiration from my forehead and then slowly ascended onto the ridge of the old building. I turned to look at the scene where Sherlock and Moriarty had both taken their last stand. I would never know what was said on the roof that day, I supposed there wasn't much more time to wonder. Something black and sleek caught the corner of my eye. I stepped down off of the edge to investigate. A mobile. _Sherlock's mobile._ I turned the device over and over in my hands. Surely the forensics team was not so incompetent as to leave something as substantial as this at a crime scene. Anderson must have been on the case. The thought made me want to laugh, but the other memories that came with it stifled this. I tried to turn it on. It was a futile attempt after it had been outside for three months, but I had to try. This was how Sherlock got his note to me. I could see where I was standing from here. I must have looked so small. Although everyone certainly already felt small when Sherlock was in the room. His note. I did not believe a word of it. But why would Sherlock lie to me? Why spend his last moments lying to his best friend? Perhaps his phone held the answer. Perhaps there was more to the message held within it. I rushed back down the steps of St. Bart's. My original motive for coming forgotten and a purpose softening my limp.

I remembered the pliers in the kitchen of our flat, and took little hesitation in grabbing the extra key from the top of the doorframe and bursting in. I made quick work of the case of the device, retrieving the data card from it and replacing it in my own mobile. There was no passcode. No kind of security at all. Like it was meant for someone to find. I checked the most recent calls. I see his call to me, his note. I check text messages. Several on that day, but none of it makes any sense. They are all only halves of conversations. The context is lost on me. Most of them are addressed to unnamed numbers, but there is one short conversation with Molly:

_Are you in position? SH_

_Yes, but are you sure you want to do this?_

_I have no choice. SH_

_What about John? _

_What about him? SH_

_How can you go through with hurting him like this? Surely you must understand what thinking you're dead will do to him?_

_I will do whatever is necessary to keep him safe. SH_

"_Thinking _you're dead", he's alive. Sherlock Holmes is alive. I don't know how but he must be. My best friend is alive. My euphoria edged on hysterics as I sunk to the floor laughing. _Alive. _

I stared at the words on the screen for a while reaffirming that I was not delusional. Mrs. Hudson must have returned home and heard me up there because I eventually heard someone at the door.

"John, the psychiatry must be helping. You haven't even stepped foot in here since..." She stopped short. Still treading softly on the subject.

"It's really doing wonders. I must be off now. Mysteries to solve and all of that." I sprang up more energetically than I'm sure she expected, kissed her on the cheek and rushed out. I had a mortician to interrogate.

Molly seemed frightened when I showed up at her door, I suppose it was the wide grin I was sporting.

"Oh John! I um was not expecting you. You certainly seem more...uh... cheerful than when I last saw you." She said, avoiding my eyes.

"I certainly should be," I said, taking a step forward to compensate for her retreating one. "Last time we spoke my best friend was dead. Now it seems that is not the case. And I do believe you know more about that than you originally let on."

She collapses into the chair behind her, clearly lacking the constitution required for enduring interrogation. "I'm so sorry John. He made me swear, he said it was to protect you."

I squatted in order to be on her level. "It's fine, I understand. But where is he now?"

Molly shakes her head. "I don't know. I just handled the coronary report, made sure it all went the way it was supposed to. I haven't seen him since."

"Well then you're going to help me find him."

She gave a weak nod in response.

The next few months were a whirlwind of names and plans as Molly explained to me what she knew of Sherlock's complex plot, and assisted me in tracking the highly functioning sociopath. But we kept coming to dead ends as to his possible location, he could be anywhere. I tried several times to contact Mycroft, thinking that he _had _to know something. But he proved as elusive as his younger brother. He prefers not to be found, but to find you. I was becoming increasingly sick of the melodrama that seems to run in the Holmes family.

But find me he eventually did. Today, the 182nd day.

I am alone, Molly is working in the morgue tonight. On one wall of the flat, the one Sherlock riddled with holes, I've put up a collection of notes, whatever we found. Anything that could lead to Sherlock. I just received a text message, but have not yet read it. I have been absorbed in what might be the the last remaining puzzle piece to finding Sherlock for the last few hours. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a black car pulling up to 221 Baker Street. Mycroft.

I make my way down and out to the street. I get into the car to find Anthea, for lack of a more accurate name, waiting with her Blackberry. I don't even bother asking our destination.

I have been taken to the same deserted lot that I was escorted to the first time I met Mycroft. I am about to make some snide comment about Mycroft's weight, in his brother's place, when I realize that I do not have to.

Sherlock Holmes. A picture with his cheekbones and upturned collar and all. But an emotion that rarely dares to contort his features obscures this image. Apology.

"Bastard," I breath. I planned to kill him again once I found him, knock some consideration into him. But that face... That idiotic-not-dead-face.

I take the several bounds necessary to embrace him. He had given me my last favor, my miracle.

"I'm sorry." He shudders.

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**I hope you enjoyed it. Please let me know what you thought. If there are any mistakes grammatical or otherwise I'm going to blame it on it being 3am.**


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